


Spooked

by sign_from_god_complex



Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Crofter's Organic Spread (Sanders Sides), Fluff, Gen, Ghost Hunting, Hijinks & Shenanigans, Humor, I shouldn't be surprised that's a tag really, and poor Logan getting roped into it, if you stretch the definition of hunting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-20
Updated: 2019-03-20
Packaged: 2019-11-25 21:56:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18171953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sign_from_god_complex/pseuds/sign_from_god_complex
Summary: It’s well established that Logan would do almost anything for a jar of Crofter’s and Virgil and Roman are not above using that to their advantage.





	Spooked

**Author's Note:**

> This is loosely based on [this tumblr post](https://sign-from-god-complex.tumblr.com/post/183553251510/moxiethesimplenerd-woorenergy)! Hope you enjoy!!!

It had started off subtle. At least, Logan thought it had.

To begin with, it was more of a pavlovian response than anything. First with Patton asking for his assistance with dinner and subsequently making pancakes with Crofter's for breakfast the next morning; next with Roman wanting help with organising his writing and providing Logan with Crofter's on toast afterwards; then Virgil getting him to keep Roman distracted for an hour in return for a Crofter’s and Nutella sandwich, etc. etc.

Logan sort of just... came to expect a Crofter's-type reward for helping out his roommates. And he received one, without fail, every single time.

Most commonly it was toast or sandwiches, sometimes even biscuits, but on rare occasions, Logan would be provided with Patton’s Crofter's cookies—delicious homemade shortbread with Crofter's baked into the middle. And on even rarer occasions Logan would be rewarded with a whole jar. An entire jar of Crofter's jelly for him to do whatever he pleased with (though really, both he and his roommates knew exactly what he was going to do with it—consume the entire jar the second he returned to his room).

And, okay, sure, maybe the lure of that delicious fruit spread had enticed him into doing a  _few_ things he may not have done otherwise—take care of Virgil’s pet spider for a week while he was away, agree to read Patton a bedtime story and clean Roman’s entire room, to name a few—but he had it under control! He knew what was happening and it was all under control.

So how, exactly, he'd managed to get to  _this_ point, he wasn't entirely sure.

 

_**11:37 p.m.** _

"I'm sorry,  _what_ are we doing?"

The living room was covered in empty cardboard boxes, wires and... Logan supposed “equipment” would be the correct term, but he used that word loosely. Virgil was currently preoccupied with laying some cables across the living room rug but at Logan’s question he glanced over and rolled his eyes.

"The apartment is haunted, genius, I told you. Me and Princey here are setting up a trap and you—" he pointed a finger at Logan—"are going to be the bait."

Logan blinked.

"The apartment is  _not_ haunted, Virgil."

"Oh yeah?” Virgil sat up, giving him a mostly harmless glare. “Then how do you explain that time when we woke up to find every cabinet in the kitchen open? Huh? And what about the time every single pair of our shoes were thrown out the window overnight?" He adjusted a wire beside him, muttering, “Thank god we only live on the second floor.”

"You know I hate to agree with our resident storm cloud, but he is right,” Roman said, pushing himself up from where he was fiddling with a grey box on the ground, “Weird things keep happening in this apartment and we’re  _going_ to find out why.”

Logan sighed. This clearly wasn’t a fight he was going to win today.

“Okay, alright. Regardless of whether or not the apartment is haunted—which, by the way, it isn’t—what makes you think  _I’m_ going to agree to be the bait?”

Virgil and Roman exchanged a look which Logan was sure did not spell out good things for him.

The two of them were notorious for mischief, actually. There had been an ongoing pranks war for months during their first year of living together before they’d eventually called a truce, and even now April Fools Day was a day to be feared.

Virgil, of course, had a running list of things it was not okay to mess with during a prank—including obvious things like physical harm and anyone’s mental wellbeing, and not so obvious things like the sugar content of meals or the destruction of any books.

Logan had managed to avoid being involved in any of Virgil and Roman’s hairbrained schemes thus far mostly by claiming complete disinterest, but he had a feeling he wasn’t going to be able to get away with that this time.

He watched as Roman reached into his bag and drew out a single jar of jelly. Crofters. Logan’s Berry.

Goddammit! He had classes in the morning! He could not afford to be playing ghost hunters with his stupid roommates well into the night; he needed optimal sleep and rest.

“No.  _No!_  You  _cannot_  keep doing this! This is not going to work every ti-” Logan was waving his hands in front of his body in a negating gesture but stopped cold when Roman made direct eye contact, reached into his bag, and drew out  _another_  jar of Crofters.

_Shit._

Logan shut his eyes with a resigned sigh. “Give me the fucking jars.”

There was a cheer from the other two as Roman handed the jelly over—complete with a spoon—and Logan dropped into the armchair, clutching the obtained Crofters closely to his chest.

 

_**12:05 a.m.** _

Just as Logan was finishing off his first jar of Crofters, Virgil announced that they were “all set up”. He took a seat on the couch next to Roman, pulling his knees up to his chest.

Across the living room rug, Logan could see about 15 different wires in all different colours, set up in a grid pattern. Logan assumed there was some sort of method to the colours, as it certainly wasn’t arranged for aesthetic purposes—plainly put, it looked awful.

“Right.” Logan frowned at the floor. “And what is  _this_ , exactly?”

Virgil grinned, balancing on the balls of his feet on the couch cushions and really, couldn’t anyone in this house ever sit like a normal human being? 

“It’s an electromagnetic grid,” he explained, “Don’t worry, it’s totally harmless to us, but to ghosts… and, uh, rats, it’s kinda like a super uncomfortable jail.”

Logan inhaled. “I see.”

He didn’t know where Virgil got the information he was standing so firmly behind, and quite honestly, he wasn’t sure he wanted to know. It was probably best he was left in the dark on this one.

“Okay, Lo,” Virgil instructed, “What we need you to do is, when you see the ghost try and lure it over here so that it’s floating above the grid, and then, when it’s in position, press the big red button on the box by your feet and we should have it trapped. You got that?”

Honestly, he looked entirely too proud of himself for a plan that could have just as easily been concocted by a four-year-old with an overactive imagination (so, Roman), but he kept that to himself. After all, the whole situation was ridiculous so the complexity of the plan wasn’t really something he was all that worried about.

“Okay,” Logan responded, with what he thought was a healthy amount of scepticism, “and what exactly do you plan on  _doing_ with this “ghost” once it’s captured?”

Roman gave him a look like he was being an idiot, which Logan thought was ironic given the circumstances. “Why, we ask them to politely leave, of course!”

Right, of course.

“ _Anyway_ ,” Virgil continued, voice a little sharper, “While you play bait out here, me and Ro will be hiding so the ghost doesn’t see us and get spooked. You ready to go?”

Logan sighed. “As I’ll ever be, I suppose.”

“Great,” Virgil replied and with a grin, dashed to hide in the entrance to the kitchen. _  
_

 

_**1:22 a.m.** _

Logan felt as if he’d been waiting in the dark for days now at this point, though likely it had only been an hour or so. As was to be expected, no one had heard a single strange noise or seen a single strange thing in the time they’d been sitting there and Logan truly wasn’t sure how much more he could take.

He had counted and mentally catalogued every item in this room twice already and he was strongly regretting not fetching a book before they’d begun, even if all he would’ve had to read by was the light produced by the box at his feet and Roman’s flashlight resting on the windowsill behind him. His patience was seriously beginning to wear thin.

“And when, exactly, is this so-called-ghost supposed to show up?” Logan whispered in the general direction of the doorway where Virgil was “hiding”. He’d tried speaking a regular volume earlier this evening and, to the backdrop of Roman and Virgil’s insistent shushing, Logan had decided it was best to play along.

There was a slight shuffling noise from the kitchen before Virgil spoke up. “I dunno, it probably should have been here by now, right?”

There was a note of hesitancy in his voice that Logan felt was entirely justified and, in fact, probably should have appeared sooner.

You would think that Virgil would be more nervous about this whole “ghost catching” situation considering his almost crippling anxiety disorder. From many a late night conversation, Logan was aware ghosts were a thing that Virgil was interested in, however, he’d always thought it was more in the abstract—enjoying creepy places and being curious about historically significant “hauntings”—not quite so concrete as believing their actual, real-life apartment was haunted.

It seemed as if his excitement was trumping any fear and Logan was not entirely sure that that was a good thing.

“Well, maybe it doesn’t  _want_ to show up, what with specs over here searching the room like he’s looking for his lost contact lens!” Roman hissed from his spot behind the couch—and really, if their problem truly were a ghost, Logan is sure Roman’s hiding spot would not protect him from being seen—“Pretend to be asleep or something!” 

Logan sighed, moving around in the chair until his head was settled against the armrest and closing his eyes. “That shouldn’t be hard, considering that  _is_  what I should be doing right now.”

And with that, the room fell back into silence, and despite Logan’s best (well, maybe second-best) attempts, he found himself drifting off to sleep.

 

_**3:13 a.m.** _

“Guys. Guys, wake up. I heard something.”

Logan felt a voice pulling him out of sleep and into consciousness. The surface beneath him was moderately uncomfortable—it certainly wasn’t his bed, it seemed more like a chair. In fact, when he opened his eyes he could vaguely make out the shapes of the living room furniture.

Logan blinked a few times. Why was he in the living room? And if this was the living room, then what was that all over the flo-

_Oh_. Right. This.

“What was that, Virgil?” Logan mumbled, stretching out in the armchair and wiping the sleep out of his eyes.

Virgil's voice was a little harsher this time, slightly more panicked yet still quiet. “I  _said_ , I heard something.”

Logan sighed. “Are you sure it isn’t simply a cat on the roof? Possibly the w-”

His rationalising was cut off by the sound of a step creaking.

Oh.

Okay, well, there was no reason to jump to conclusions. Logan was sure it was just the apartment settling, old buildings did that sometimes.

“You heard that too, right?” Virgil sounded panicked and Logan raced to assuage his fears.

“Yes, Virgil,” he whispered, “but I’m sure it’s noth-”

Another creak on the stairs. Closer this time.

Logan took a deep breath, trying to calm his racing heart. What could he  _possibly_  have to be worried about? Ghosts weren’t real. He was simply indulging Virgil and Roman (the latter of which, actually, Logan was sure was still asleep) with their nonsensical ghost theory and nothing more.

It was only a moment before the stairs creaked again, closer than before, and Logan distantly realised he had curled up tightly in the chair—his legs pulled in tight to his body and arms wrapped around them. He forced himself to relax. There was nothing to worry about. There was  _absolutely_ nothing to worry about.

With a final creak, a figure appeared in the doorway to the living room.

And as that figure stepped out of the doorway and into the light of the flashlight, all the tension Logan held left him in one big exhale.

“ _Patton?”_ Virgil said, clearly giving up on the idea of being quiet, and this time it was Logan’s turn to shush him.

“Virgil, he is clearly sleepwalking,” Logan whispered, “Please refrain from startling him; he would likely be very disoriented were he to wake up here.”

Logan watched him curiously, all his previous apprehension far gone. Patton was making his way around the couch, mumbling to himself words that Logan couldn’t quite hear. Once he reached the windows, Patton grabbed the ends of both of the curtains and began tying them together.

Logan could make out, “Gotta make sure you don’ fly away,” in amongst all the gibberish and he chuckled softly to himself. It seems they’d found the culprit after all.

Logan raised an eyebrow at Virgil, who’d stepped out of his hiding place to sulk in the doorway instead. “Would you still like me to “trap” him?”

“Oh, shut up,” Virgil scowled, “I can’t believe I bought all this stupid equipment for nothing.”

He moved over to the middle of the room and began to pack up all the junk laying there, evidently deciding that it wasn’t worth it to wake up Roman.

“Yes, it would appear that is the case, wouldn’t it?” Logan said smugly, acting as if he’d never been worried even in the slightest. He wasn’t sure Virgil bought it. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to put Patton back to bed and maybe finally get some proper sleep myself.”

He placed a hand on Patton’s back and led him gently towards the stairs. Before they actually began to ascend the steps, however, Logan spun around to glare at Virgil.

“Oh, and the next time you two want a guinea pig for your ridiculous antics, call someone else.”

So, of course, two weeks later Roman and Virgil were back, waving two individual jars of Crofters in front of Logan to entice him into something ludicrous and time wasting. Logan agreed. After all, they were nothing if not predictable.

**Author's Note:**

> Alternate title ideas for this fic that I couldn't use cause it was spoiler-y include Patton the Friendly Ghost and Patton-giest.
> 
> Talk to me on tumblr!! ~ [sign-from-god-complex](https://sign-from-god-complex.tumblr.com) ~


End file.
